HBO Comes to the iPad, a Couple Days Early

All the “Sopranos” and most other great HBO shows you can eat–as long as you’re already paying for the TV service. Works on iPhones and some Android models, too.

Netflix in Talks for Original Series

Netflix Inc. is in advanced talks to distribute a forthcoming television series directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey, said people familiar with the talks. If such a deal were to come to fruition it would add a new competitor to the television industry by increasing the degree to which Netflix vies with premium-cable television channels like Time Warner Inc.’s HBO.

In Yet Another Content Hook-Up, AOL Strikes Deal With Endemol

AOL’s strategy to partner with third-party content creators for original programming–especially premium video content–keeps ticking, with another programming partnership with Endemol USA. The New York-based Internet company said it would “co-develop and co-produce new Web programming initially aimed at AOL’s growing women’s audience” with Endemol, makers of such fine television shows as “Jerseylicious.”

Viral Video: Other TV Finales (That Were Much Better Than "Lost")

While the final episode of ABC’s “Lost” got all the attention last night, many were dissatisfied with the ending, which seemed to suggest the castaways were all dead the whole time. But here are BoomTown’s favorite TV finales, including my personal fave from HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” where all the deaths make much more sense given the premise.

There's No Biz Like No Biz at Twitter! (And Will Google Swoop In Before It All Comes Crashing Down?)

Since BoomTown constantly called the $15 billion valuation of Facebook “insane” when Microsoft forked over $240 million in 2007, and gave Slide’s Max Levchin a very hard time when his widget company got a $550 million valuation a year ago, it’s only fair that I say something equally appropriate about Twitter. The hot microblogging service just got its very own $250 million valuation, but without a dime of revenue in sight. (I know, Bijan, it’s coming, it’s coming!) After all, Facebook and Slide got their funding in boom times and here we are hurtling toward a possible Depression: The Sequel. But I am torn.

A Garlinghouse Memorial: BoomTown Decodes the Infamous "Peanut Butter Manifesto"

Now that he’s officially–well, Yahoo has not said so, but it is so–leaving the company this later summer, what say we blame Brad Garlinghouse for all the woes of Yahoo! After all, Garlinghouse’s infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” was the key Ur-moment that one could point to as the one in which the curtains were pulled back at the troubled Internet company to reveal, well, a very sticky mess. The 2006 internal document, penned by the Yahoo senior vice president, essentially unfairly impugned delicious peanut butter by using it as a metaphor for Yahoo spreading its resources too thinly. So, as a memorial to the Garlinghouse era, BoomTown decodes the manifesto.

HBO to Apple: iWin

Steve Jobs has apparently accepted the unacceptable: Things don’t always go Steve’s way. The mercurial Apple CEO has been notoriously intransigent when it comes to matters of variable pricing on iTunes, arguing that charging higher prices for more popular content might backfire, sending customers off to the file-sharing networks.
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